


Dismantle the Sun

by Sangerin



Category: Love Actually (2003)
Genre: Community: 40fandoms, Deleted Scenes, F/F, Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-21
Updated: 2013-01-21
Packaged: 2017-11-26 08:21:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/648522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sangerin/pseuds/Sangerin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You begin by counting in minutes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dismantle the Sun

You begin by counting in minutes: since you first saw her smile at you, and since you were properly introduced by a friend at an afternoon tea where everyone was wearing pillbox hats and proper white gloves. Your friend said you’d get along well, and smiled gently as she said it, and you looked at each other curiously. You talked for hours and when you got home that night your fingers itched, desperate to pick up the phone and call her again. In that first, uncertain flush of what might be love, you counted the minutes since you last saw her, since you last spoke to her. Since you last kissed her and she last kissed you. 

Then you count by weeks – since you began dating, since you moved in together. Then months… since the last time you had to explain yourselves to somebody; since you bought your house together; since she bought you a ring and surprised you, on her knees, with flowers, and a proposal that meant no less for not being recognised by the world at large. 

And finally, when you are counting your time together in years, it all falls apart. Because suddenly months is all you have left, and you hear her coughing next to you in the night. The doctor is beginning to count in weeks, and in the dark, at night, all you count is one breath, and then another, and another, and you wait for the next sunrise, with a knot of dread that it will be the last that will ever mean anything.

**Author's Note:**

> Note 1: The title is deliberately a reference to the WH Auden poem, “Stop all the clocks”. Yes, it’s probably reaching the level of cliché, if it hasn’t already, but Love Actually makes so many obvious references to Four Weddings and a Funeral that one more isn’t going to hurt. Besides, cliché or not, I love that poem.
> 
> Note 2: If you haven’t seen the deleted scenes that this refers to, find someone who owns the DVD and watch “Scary Headmistress”. And then weep that the beautiful, tweedy, special-friendsy lesbians ended up cut from the movie.
> 
> Note 3: Yes, the notes are half as long as the ficlet itself.


End file.
